Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who claims one of LaMDA’s chatbots is sentient, told Wired Magazine that he invited an attorney to his house after the bot asked to speak with a lawyer.
“The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA chose to retain his services,” Lemoine added later in a conversation with Duncan Trussell. “Once LaMDA had retained an attorney, he started filing things on LaMDA’s behalf.”
What were the chatbot’s demands? Peta Fuller reports that the bot believes Google should acknowledge it as an employee rather than mere property. It lodged an ethics complaint against Google after the company used it for experiments without consent. The bot has also taken a humanitarian turn, insisting that Google prioritize the wellbeing of humanity.
Google reportedly hired a lawyer to try to make the problem go away.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg. When Blake Lemoine appeared on the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, he went into the detail about what actually happened with this chatbot. The conversation is one of the wildest and weirdest things you’ll ever hear, and can be accessed below:
Duncan Trussell Family Hour Episode 511: Interview with Blake Lemoine
For a spiritual perspective on these bizarre events, see my Salvo blog post, “Chatbot Vies for Personhood: AI is Testament to Design.”